I miss the obvious all the time. See the typo in the title of this post? Obvious, isn’t it?
But on a more serious note: I just realized that I’ve been missing something in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) that now seems ridiculously obvious. I first saw Vertigo in 1984 and have seen it many times since. I’d say that Vertigo is my favorite film. But I think I’ve misunderstood the relationship between John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) and Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes), which has seemed to me a matter of close friends of many years standing. One line of dialogue makes me now think that I’m wrong: “How’s your love life, Midge?”
If Scottie is in the habit of dropping in on Midge, wouldn’t he know, at least sort of? This question could be a matter of awkward exposition, a way to introduce the subject of Scottie and Midge’s past relationship. But here’s what I think is going on. We know that Scottie and Midge were close in college. As Scottie recalls, they were engaged — for “three whole weeks,” as Midge adds. They later (I now think) drifted apart. The death of the police officer who falls from a rooftop in the film’s opening scene has made the news, along with Scottie, who clung to a gutter, paralyzed by acrophobia, as the man fell. Midge (I now think) has seen this news and gotten in touch, feeling tenderness and pity and hoping to rekindle their relationship. More dialogue from Scottie and Midge’s first scene:
“Aren’t you ever gonna get married?”This exchange too is not what one would expect between close friends of long standing.
“You know there’s only one man in the world for me, Johnny-O.”
“I was asleep, and my wife said, ‘Daddy, you have a call from a Mister Duke Ellington.’ I said, ‘Who?’”The drummer Butch Ballard has died at the age of ninety-two. He was one of the few musicians to have played with both the Count Basie and Ellington bands. Ballard can be heard to advantage on the Ellington trio recording Piano Reflections (Capitol).
My son the aphorist:
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land in the vast emptiness of space.”
Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (via Pinboard)
[Thanks, Ben.]
From a defense of — what can one call it? — offline, real-presence education:
The goal of bringing students to campus for several years is to immerse them in an environment in which learning is the highest value, something online environments, no matter how interactive, cannot simulate. Real learning is hard; it requires students to trust each other and their teachers. In other words, it depends on relationships.I’m reminded of what Jacques Barzun wrote in Teacher in America (1945): “Teaching is not a process; it is a developing emotional situation.”
Johann Neem, Online Higher Education’s Individualist Fallacy (Inside Higher Ed)
One expensive chair:
One of the most iconic and important post-modernist designs, Proust’s Armchair, by Italian designer and architect Alessandro Mendini, is to be sold at Bonhams as part of its Contemporary Two sale on 19 October 2011. Designed in 1978, and executed in 1981, for a performance based exhibition entitled Robot Sentimentale, it has attracted a pre-sale estimate of £20,000–30,000.A related post
Bill Cunningham, smiling while speaking:
“You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. That’s the key to the whole thing. Don’t touch money: it’s the worst thing you can do.”Bill Cunningham New York (dir. Richard Press, 2011) is a documentary about the New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. I have no interest in fashion, so I’m not sure why I was intent on seeing this film. It’s a wonderful portrait of an ascetic, cheerful, funny, modest, utterly dedicated man who negotiates life on his terms: traveling through Manhattan on a bicycle, eating in cheap restaurants, living in a tiny room in Carnegie Hall with the dozens of file cabinets that hold his work. (The cabinets’ handles hold the hangers that hold his few clothes.) A few minutes late in the film are painful: they hint at complexities that an attentive audience can most likely work out for itself.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Steven P. Jobs, the charismatic technology pioneer who co-founded Apple Inc. and transformed one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies, has died. He was 56.A good way to remember Steve Jobs: read the prepared text of the commencement address he gave at Stanford University in 2005. The address is made of three stories: about trust, work, and mortality.
Apple announced the death of Jobs — whose legacy included the Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” Apple said. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”
Steve Jobs dies; Apple’s co-founder transformed computers and culture (Los Angeles Times)
